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Dorilant
Alithea’s maid. Like Margery, Lucy is from a lower social class and, therefore, is not educated and does not have a reputation to protect the way that upper class ladies do. However, like Margery, Lucy is more intelligent than people realize. She immediately sees through Sparkish, who is engaged to Alithea, and knows that he is not good enough for her and does not appreciate his fiancée. Lucy tries to warn Alithea of this, but she is resigned to the fact that, as a servant, Alithea will take no notice of her. Lucy also conspires with Margery to trick Pinchwife. As a woman of lower social status, Lucy is openly treated with less respect by men than the upper-class ladies in the play. In one scene, she is manhandled by Dorilant and he later calls her a “strapper,” a term which suggests a prostitute or a common woman.
Lucy Quotes in The Country Wife
The The Country Wife quotes below are all either spoken by Lucy or refer to Lucy. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 4, Scene 1
Quotes
The woman that marries to love better will be as much mistaken as the wencher that marries to live better. No. madam, marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before … But what a devil is this honor? ’Tis sure a disease in the head, like the megrim, or falling sickness, that always hurries people away to do themselves mischief. Men lose their lives by it; women what’s dearer to ’em, their love, the life of life.
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I say, loss of her honor, her quiet, nay, her life sometimes; and what’s as bad almost, the loss of this town; that is, she is sent into the country, which is the last ill usage of a husband to a wife, I think.
Then of necessity, madam, you think a man must carry his wife into the country, if he be wise. The country is as terrible, I find, to our young English ladies as a monastery to those abroad; and on my virginity, I think they would rather marry a London jailer than a high sheriff of a county, since neither can stir from his employment. Formerly women of wit married fools for a great estate, a fine seat, or the like; but now ’tis for a pretty seat only in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, St James's Fields, or the Pall Mall.
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Lucy Quotes in The Country Wife
The The Country Wife quotes below are all either spoken by Lucy or refer to Lucy. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 4, Scene 1
Quotes
The woman that marries to love better will be as much mistaken as the wencher that marries to live better. No. madam, marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before … But what a devil is this honor? ’Tis sure a disease in the head, like the megrim, or falling sickness, that always hurries people away to do themselves mischief. Men lose their lives by it; women what’s dearer to ’em, their love, the life of life.
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I say, loss of her honor, her quiet, nay, her life sometimes; and what’s as bad almost, the loss of this town; that is, she is sent into the country, which is the last ill usage of a husband to a wife, I think.
Then of necessity, madam, you think a man must carry his wife into the country, if he be wise. The country is as terrible, I find, to our young English ladies as a monastery to those abroad; and on my virginity, I think they would rather marry a London jailer than a high sheriff of a county, since neither can stir from his employment. Formerly women of wit married fools for a great estate, a fine seat, or the like; but now ’tis for a pretty seat only in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, St James's Fields, or the Pall Mall.
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